Fallingwater is a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern

Pennsylvania, 43 miles (69 km) southeast of Pittsburgh.[4] The house was built partly over a waterfall
on Bear Run in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, located in
the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains. The house was designed as a weekend home for
the family of Liliane Kaufmann and her husband, Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr., owner of Kaufmann's
Department Store.
After its completion, Time called Fallingwater Wright's "most beautiful job,"[5] and it is listed
among Smithsonian's "Life List of 28 places to visit before you die."[6] The house was designated
a National Historic Landmark in 1966.[3]In 1991, members of the American Institute of
Architects named Fallingwater the "best all-time work of American architecture" and in 2007, it was
ranked 29th on the list of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA.[7]

Fallingwater, as seen from Bear Run

At age 67, Frank Lloyd Wright was given the opportunity to design and construct three buildings.
With his three works of the late 1930s—Fallingwater; the Johnson Wax Building in Racine,
Wisconsin; and the Herbert Jacobs house in Madison, Wisconsin—Wright regained his prominence
in the architectural community.[8]

The Kaufmanns[edit]
Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr. was a Pittsburgh businessman and president of Kaufmann's Department
Store. Edgar and Liliane's only child, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., eventually became the catalyst for his
father’s relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright.[9]
In the summer of 1934, Edgar Jr. read Frank Lloyd Wright’s An Autobiography (1932), and traveled
to meet Wright at his home in Wisconsin in late September. Within three weeks, Edgar Jr. began an
apprenticeship at the Taliesin Fellowship, a communal architecture program established in 1932 by
Wright and his wife, Olgivanna. It was during a visit with Edgar Jr. at Taliesin in November 1934 that
Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann first met Frank Lloyd Wright.[10]
The Kaufmanns lived in "La Tourelle", a French Norman estate in Fox Chapel designed in 1923 for
Edgar J. Kaufmann by Pittsburgh architect Benno Janssen. However, the family also owned a
remote property outside Pittsburgh — a small cabin near a waterfall — which was used as a summer
retreat. When these cabins deteriorated, Mr. Kaufmann contacted Wright.
On December 18, 1934, Wright visited Bear Run and asked for a survey of the area around the
waterfall.[11]One was prepared by Fayette Engineering Company of Uniontown, Pennsylvania,
including all the site's boulders, trees, and topography, and forwarded to Wright in March 1935.[12]

Construction[edit]
As reported by Frank Lloyd Wright's apprentices at Taliesin, Edgar Kaufmann Sr. was in Milwaukee
on September 22, nine months after their initial meeting, and called Wright at home early Sunday
morning to surprise him with the news that he would be visiting Wright that day. Kaufmann could not
wait to see Wright's plans. Wright had told Kaufmann in earlier communication that he had been
working on the plans, but had not actually drawn anything. After breakfast that morning, amid a
group of very nervous apprentices, Wright calmly drew the plans in the two hours in which it took
Kaufmann to drive to Taliesin.[13]
Wright designed the home above the waterfall, rather than below to afford a view of the cascades as
Kaufmann had expected.[14][15] It has been said that Kaufmann was initially very upset that Wright had
designed the house to sit atop the falls. Kaufmann had wanted the house located on the southern
bank of Bear Run, directly facing the falls. He told Wright that they were his favorite aspect of the
property.[11]
The Kaufmanns planned to entertain large groups of people, so the house needed to be larger than
the original plot allowed. Also, Mr. and Mrs. Kaufmann requested separate bedrooms, as well as a
bedroom for their adult son, and an additional guest room, for a total of four bedrooms.[11]
A cantilevered structure was used to address these requests.[11] The structural design for
Fallingwater was undertaken by Wright in association with staff engineers Mendel Glickman and
William Wesley Peters, who had been responsible for the columns featured in Wright’s revolutionary
design for the Johnson Wax Headquarters.
Preliminary plans were issued to Kaufmann for approval on October 15, 1935,[16] after which Wright
made an additional visit to the site and provided a cost estimate for the job. In December 1935, an
old rock quarry was reopened to the west of the site to provide the stones needed for the house’s
walls. Wright visited only periodically during construction, assigning his apprentice Robert Mosher as
his permanent on-site representative.[16] The final working drawings were issued by Wright in March
1936, with work beginning on the bridge and main house in April.

The strong horizontal and vertical lines are a distinctive feature of Fallingwater

The construction was plagued by conflicts between Wright, Kaufmann and the construction
contractor. Uncomfortable with what he saw as Wright's insufficient experience using reinforced
concrete, Kaufmann had the architect's daring cantilever design reviewed by a firm of consulting
engineers. Upon receiving their report, Wright took offense, immediately requesting that Kaufmann
return his drawings and indicating that he was withdrawing from the project. Kaufmann relented to
Wright's gambit, and the engineer’s report was subsequently buried within a stone wall of the
house.[16]
For the cantilevered floors, Wright and his team used upside-down T-shaped beams integrated into
a monolithic concrete slab which formed both the ceiling of the space below and provided resistance
against compression. The contractor, Walter Hall, also an engineer, produced independent
computations and argued for increasing the reinforcing steel in the first floor’s slab. Wright refused
the suggestion. While some sources state that the contractor quietly doubled the amount of
reinforcement,[17] others say that Kaufmann's consulting engineers – at Kaufmann's request – redrew
Wright's reinforcing drawings and doubled the amount of steel specified by Wright.[16]
In addition, the contractor did not build in a slight upward incline in the formwork for the cantilever to
compensate for the settling and deflection of the cantilever. Once the concrete formwork was
removed, the cantilever developed a noticeable sag. Upon learning of the unapproved steel addition,
Wright recalled Mosher.[18]
With Kaufmann’s approval, the consulting engineers arranged for the contractor to install a
supporting wall under the main supporting beam for the west terrace. When Wright discovered it on
a site visit, he had Mosher discreetly remove the top course of stones. When Kaufmann later
confessed to what had been done, Wright showed him what Mosher had done and pointed out that
the cantilever had held up for the past month under test loads without the wall’s support.[19]
The main house was completed in 1938, and the guest house was completed the following year.[20]